Editor’s Note– Ms. Bexley wanted the readers to know this is an ode to the annual American flu season. It was inspired by a childhood friend who had to be hospitalized due to the flu because the friend didn’t pay attention to herself. Such events are rare, but do occur. The CDC says “The ‘peak month of flu activity’ is the month with the highest percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza virus infection during that flu season. During this 40-year period, flu activity most often peaked in February (17 seasons), followed by December (7 seasons), January (6 seasons) and March (6 seasons).” For those interested click here for the link to CDC’s information on How to Prevent the Flu.

Geneva had always been a morning person. She loved the quiet of her apartment before the rest of the world woke up. The only thing that could ruin her peace was a faulty Cuisinart premium 72-ounce single-serve coffeemaker. A splurge item she purchased during the pandemic with her bonus government money. But this morning, something seemed different. Geneva brewed a pod of mountain grown coffee and took a sip. Immediately she felt off balance, not quite sick, but not well either. She got dressed for work and left her apartment, still feeling strange.

When she got to the office, Geneva couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She tried to focus on her work but found it difficult with such a foggy head. Suddenly, one of her colleagues came over to ask for help with a project. Geneva tried to focus but drew a blank. She could feel everyone in the room looking at her and knew she must look terrible.

But as the day went on, Geneva felt worse and worse. She did not know what was wrong with her, but by lunchtime, she knew she needed to go home. Her coworkers told her to go to the doctors, but Geneva couldn’t as she was only a part-time temp and had no health insurance. Besides she distrusted the medical profession since the pandemic and watching a bunch of YouTubes on how they were duping America on COVID. When she got back to her apartment, she collapsed on the couch and slept for hours.

When Geneva woke up, she finally understood what was happening. She had been poisoned! She had felt this way before, and this time was no different. She recalled the last time online sources said it could be a form of poisoning. Someone must have put something in her coffee and tried to kill her. But why? Geneva didn’t have any enemies that she could think of…

Then she remembered the coffee pod. It was a free sample from work. But now she realized that someone who wanted to kill her had planted it there. Someone at her work. It was Lloyd with Human Resources who put out the free samples from some supposed trade show, and she was the only one who took some. She never trusted Lloyd in Human Resources. Since she was a temp, all her timecards had to be signed off by him after the supervisor and before they went to the agency. And he was always so picky about the hours, double checking them with the building’s security of her comings and goings. It was like he had it out for her. That was the vibe she got from him. Besides, all the other women said he was a perv, so she knew he would be capable of poisoning some woman to get his way with them.

Geneva had been awake for hours online reading up on ways to poison someone with coffee, despite her exhaustion. She was feeling chills, had a runny nose and a cough, and her body ached. Geneva felt horrible, and she was pretty sure the poison wasn’t out of her system yet. She came across on a subreddit post about the Sleepers, a group of men who took advantage of women by slipping them knock out drugs in their drinks to have their way with them. “I could see Lloyd being part of this group.” She said to herself. She needed to find out more about them, and if something connected them to that supposed trade show before she could decide to tell her experiences to the rest of the subreddit community she followed about conspiracy theories that were more than likely real.

It would be another five days before the poison had cleared her system. She was doing everything she found online to remove toxins from the body and had everything same day delivered by Amazon to her. Once better, she diligently reported her entire experience to the subreddit group. She hoped they would be able to collaborate her information so she could expose the Sleepers, and hopefully Lloyd, for what they were.

An immediate comment to her post came from Toucandy1654, “Sounds more like you had the flu. Did you get your annual flu shot? It Is flu season, you know.” The comment was up rated 4.5 thousand times in a brief time, along with multiple people adding to the comment about the various problems and issues concerning the flu shot, including how the U.S. government is working with space aliens to have nanobots inserted into people.

GiantOrange4657 posted, “You realize that if you say Lloyd is some dude who slips women mickeys to rape them is probably defamation and will get you sued if he loses his job over it if you don’t have absolute proof.” Others concurred in replies to GiantOrange4657 citing various recent news reports on character defamation lawsuits.

Geneva spent the whole day following the conversation threads until late that evening when she concluded: “That’s it! It wasn’t the coffee after all. Space aliens have infected me with nanobots! They must have done it while I was sleeping! Damn it! I need to install cameras to catch them on video when they return to harvest the nanobots.” Geneva said, slamming her laptop shut.